


Doctor Feelgood

by misslonelyhearts



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: M/M, Original Character(s), mystery doctor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-22
Updated: 2012-10-22
Packaged: 2017-11-16 20:27:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/543496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misslonelyhearts/pseuds/misslonelyhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard just has to ask about the mystery doctor, the one Kaidan goes out with on the Citadel after Shepard died that one time. So, Kaidan tells the story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doctor Feelgood

“I’d ask, but it would come out sounding like something it’s not.”  Shepard loops the tags over his head and Kaidan watches them reject the faint light in the room before they disappear under his shirt. “Only curious, that’s all.”

Curiosity?  Not like cats, and even less like normal people.  When a man like Shepard is curious about something, Kaidan smiles to himself, whole species tremble on their distant homeworlds.  And even those prepared for it tend to shake a little up close, where curiosity is really just a formality on the way to contact . . .to starting with hope, for once.  He pushes up onto his elbows. “Why now?”

Shepard stops, hands on the leather jacket draped over his chair.  “I don’t know.  Don’t tell me if you don’t want to.”

That in the entire, black universe there might be someone who made this man jealous, that it had been a burr in his throat for years until this moment, makes Kaidan sit up in the bed and shake his head.  What version would net him the best result? What result wouldn’t he take at this point?  It wasn’t a particularly great story, even if it was the only one he had of its kind.

“His name was John, if you can believe it,” Kaidan says softly, remembering the doctor less for his touch than for the unexpected comfort of his voice.  Remembering that, beyond a brief question early on, he hadn’t asked about the renunciation of that famous Spectre. 

For Kaidan, the second part would have been almost enough.

“It’s a pretty common name,” replies Shepard, forgoing the jacket and returning to sit on the edge of the bed.

“Not for me.” And Kaidan hardly feels the mattress shift as he looks to the canopy of stars, trying to find the pinpoint of the story in all that distant glitter.  The part of it that seemed to matter.

.

.

.

The tongue in his mouth belongs to a John _._ The awful poetry of it pounds in Kaidan’s temples, and the taste of beer slides over his teeth a moment before he decides to return the kiss with a rueful groan.  But John, this John, won’t know the difference.

They don’t rip into each other like a bad vid, and for Kaidan that’s important.  Drinks had accomplished what they needed to, though with less pure intent than the stories they told.  This John is older, graying and upbeat where the other had always been dark, and the man under his palms smells like warm sand.

_I’m used to blood_ , he’d said,  _inside and out_.   _And the sound of throttle and gunfire._  

In the hallway, Kaidan’s hands tighten on his shoulders.

_I miss it_.   _You know?_   Doctor John had smiled with his eyes, not down at his beer but straight through Kaidan.  There was enough there to touch, a true spark of something like knowing, and Kaidan wondered how he seemed so incredibly vibrant with those crinkles around his eyes.  He missed being useful? No, Kaidan had sipped and nodded at what needn’t be said. 

He missed the  _rush._

_What about you?_ The knee against his had bumped playfully.

_Not sure.  I’ll always be a soldier, I guess._

_That’s what we all say._ He'd leaned back and laced his hands behind his head.  The view was good, better than Kaidan had hoped for when they’d been set up, and John oozed unspent energy.  The type of man who surfed, and cooked, and climbed, and fucked to spite his silvering hair. 

You can’t miss a thing that never leaves, though, even if it was never yours.  And while he’s busy, now, backing John into the hotel room and unable to reason how this had seemed like a good idea, Kaidan can’t stop the name ricocheting through the harder corridors of his mind.  _John_.

But this isn’t the Normandy -- it’s barely a false sort of nighttime on the Citadel -- and John is quieter than he expected.  Which makes it hard not to fill those spaces with something. They kiss again, Kaidan pushing past the tender lips to search for pain that simply isn’t there, finding relief with the smile slotting over his mouth.

“Want to stay?” He offers, smoothing fingers through Kaidan’s hair.

“I think so.” With his eyes closed, Kaidan still sees John’s green gaze on him, perfect and calm.  And damn if those crinkles didn’t stay with him, too, all promises of sun and abandon.

“Staff Commander,” John murmurs, breath teasing Kaidan's earlobe, a skim of lips there, too. “I’m not in the habit of talking people into this.  What do you want?”

Kaidan answers with a kiss, one that  _does_  tear this time, and grips John’s neck.  Though, he finds far greater purchase on the denim-clad ass, honest-to-God jeans, that remind him of home.  He squeezes.

“This,” is the croaking affirmation from his throat.  John finally sucks the earlobe, military nod just a bit shy of natural, and pulls Kaidan back against the window overlooking the Presidium.  His fingers dip into the waist and then the fly of Kaidan's pants, and Kaidan touches the tight-cropped hair, whispering into teeth and lips. “Damn. Yes.”

“Good answer,” John says, on his knees, and Kaidan doesn’t remember how that happened.  The sound of his obvious approval is only slightly more arousing than the feel of its vibration, the hot breath, passing through Kaidan’s pants straight to his dick.  But that could be something he imagines. 

His legs go rigid when they should relax, and Kaidan can barely look down at John, where he’s working the zipper too slowly and kneading a thigh too softly, without flashing a smile he’s sure sits somewhere south of sexy.

The hotel room goes quiet once John gets him out, lips wetting for more than just a lead-in conversation, and his mouth makes Kaidan think of candy apples right before the image turns decidedly more adult.  But for a moment it’s hot sugar, glistening and red, and sweeter than Kaidan feels he truly deserves.  He closes his eyes and doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until John tickles his abdomen.

“Wh-what?”  Looking down past his open fly, Kaidan finds amused eyes, crinkles turning impish.  John strokes him, perfect pressure and a thumb to die for, and rubs his lips over the tip before chuckling.

“Relax, will you?  It’s not an exam.”  He starts to lick again and stops. “Unless you like that?”

“I don’t have a ‘let’s play doctor’ kink if that’s what you mean,” Kaidan says, exhaling, watching John’s mouth slip along the underside of his dick.  Though, maybe he’s developing that kink right here and now.  And it’s not the mouth he’d come to see at night, not the one he’d come to, but it matters less than he thought it would.  To his surprise, there are hardly any flickering remainders of that other smile superimposed on John’s mouth as he sucks.

Kaidan leans into it, less a thrust than a need for something firm to match the hands on his dick and hip.  With his arm braced against the window, forehead finding the clenched edge of his own fist, Kaidan’s eyes blur through the glass to watch the bruised purple of the Citadel’s evening sky, tracking down again to the silvery head on his dick.  John’s mouth stretches, and his knees pull those jeans tight in a warm, blue V around Kaidan’s feet.  It’s soundless motion, dampened, the traffic outside and the sharp discomfort of moans he’s hiding in his chest for no reason.  Maybe he’s saving some of them for later, but when Kaidan comes he  _does_ let one slip and it doesn’t feel obligatory.  John licks him clean, more than polite, and leans back against the window.

“Better?”  His chest rises and falls, green eyes shrewd even in the shadows.

Not in the way he’d needed, no, it wasn’t better.  Not extraordinary, either.  And this is the part that makes Kaidan unable to look away from the John on the floor the way he’d always looked away from the other, the part where he’d expected to want fireworks and aching. . .and found peace in the simple touch.  So, when Kaidan reaches down and helps John to his feet, when he kisses the truly ordinary taste of himself away from that mouth, he decides to be  _present_  for the first time since stepping onto the Citadel.  Since coaxing himself out of the first Normandy nightmares.  Since everything extraordinary died.

“What do  _you_  want?”  Kaidan whispers to the scant space between their lips when they’re done kissing and, because he’s reasonably sure he can, he reaches for John’s fly.

“You’re on the right track,” he replies, helping Kaidan’s fingers release the button and ease the zipper.

 “That, uh . . .that’d be the first time in a long time.”

“Come on.  Mouth like that,” John says, palm cupping Kaidan’s face, and a tender swipe of a thumb over his lips. “I’ll just bet you’re dynamite.”

When they move to the bed, and he pushes John back to crouch over him, Kaidan doesn’t hope for dynamite.  Silently, he prays for just  _nice_.  That would be enough.  He’s never been great at making people comfortable, never been smooth, but with the way John’s smile reaches out to him, a second before his hand actually reaches out to find his cheek, Kaidan can think of himself as capable of slightly more than duty and melancholy.

So he pulls those jeans down a little more, plants a hand in the soft bed beside John’s hip, and brushes his lips over the hot tip of John’s dick.  What it doesn’t have to be is extraordinary.  There are fingers stroking past his temple, into his hair, and Kaidan moves his tongue and his heart to accommodate real life, sinking into the impossibly true taste of skin and bitter salt.  John moves under him, cooing a little every time Kaidan’s thumb teases up, over the drooling slit, and down again along the prominent vein.   And he thinks it’s good to have something so visible to follow, so he does follow . . .with his tongue. 

For a few minutes at a time, in John’s hotel room on the Citadel, Kaidan remembers how to hold someone in his palm, to respond and delight with just a little effort if not a lot of imagination.  And when John comes it’s with a fevered sigh so sincere that Kaidan gets hard again as much from some lost reserve of pride as from the sight of a shirt pulled up over a taut, tanned stomach, and the drops he didn’t catch spread higher up.  Though that certainly helps.

“I have the strangest urge to thank you.” Kaidan runs his tongue over his lower lip, positive there are still so many things he should just keep to himself, and John sits up on his elbows, puzzled.

“That’d be  _my_  line, though,” John says around a smirk.  His eyes close, shuttering that green gaze for a moment, so Kaidan has a breath or two to appreciate John’s openness; The comfortable line he cuts across the bed, disheveled in a way that’s expected and alluring, his silver hair, and the mischievous expression no doctor would ever employ in the field.  Not one Kaidan had ever seen.

“No, I mean it,” Kaidan says, swallowing hard.

“So do I.  But gratitude has better forms, if you’re up for it.”  John gets to his knees on the bed, reaching for the hem of his shirt and Kaidan lets him.  He pulls it off, and tucks his voice into the space behind Kaidan’s ear.  “And I think you might be.”

There’s a struggle with clothing, a moment where Kaidan almost forgets to take his socks off too, but they shed everything they need to.  All the important stuff is out, anyway, fully hot in the bluish dark of the room.  And John pushes him back on the pillows, crammed and fluffed and piled (as only hotels do) against the headboard, before straddling Kaidan’s hips. 

John palms his abs, tests the rise and fall of his chest, the flat rub of both nipples, and the two of them spend some heartbeats setting a rhythm without anything more than an appreciative moan now and then. John’s easy smile returns, those impish crinkles, too, as he reaches into the nightstand. 

“I can . . .let me.”  Kaidan takes the lube pack, and some initiative he’d all but forgotten, and watches John’s eyelashes lower as they spread the cool gel over his dick together, two sets of knuckles and curved fingers working, tip to shaft, until Kaidan bucks a little, biting back a name he should be okay with, even in the dark. With the second pack, Kaidan gains some bravado, even if John has to help stretch, peppering kisses and happy groans over Kaidan’s chest. But they get there, and Kaidan’s curiously proud to nearly make him come with just a couple of fingers, and a little analog effort.

John scoots forward, fitting Kaidan’s dick along the cleft of his ass.  It’s snug, but there’s too much heat not to keep going, and Kaidan finds the spark of how much he  _wants_  to fuck, and forgets to wonder where  _that_  had been in all his blue-black headspace while it’s spiraling hard out of his groin and thighs.

“We’ll take it slow, Staff Commander.”  John rocks his hips, one hand guiding Kaidan, and kisses his forehead, his nose, his lips, before backing down.

“Oh Jesus,” Kaidan grits out, doesn’t know where to grab, settling half on the tanned shoulder inching away from him, and half on the hard edge of the mattress.  If they go any slower he’s going to curse and writhe. They do, and he does, John sinking into place like a sleek shuttle at port.  For a moment, Kaidan considers the likelihood of other ports, other storms, and then it’s swept away by the stiff creak of the headboard and how John rides him.   _John. Rides him._

It’s hard and quick after a tender start, Kaidan getting only a glimpse of green eyes when John bends to suck his neck, muttering a string of  _fuck yes, so good, come on._ Encouragement sounding less like command than Kaidan finds he’d been hoping for.  And maybe that there was any hope at all is what keeps him thick and whole inside John, feet planted and hips growling upward to meet what’s sweet and so fun he could cry from how he’d missed it. 

So it’s not a surprise to either of them when he actually says, “John. Jesus, yeah,” with a graveled whisper in the dark space between their bodies.  Something like a prayer for all the skin, ever, while it’s alive.  He’ll never say it the way he’d meant to, so why not scrabble at this John, at the silvering hair and the warm smile cut slack with sex? Why not take John’s dick in his hand and marvel at the sound he makes, a strangled whine, when Kaidan jacks him with thumb-dragging strokes? Why not, why not?

Kaidan drives up, coming, tense, fingers slipping where they’re holding to tight to John’s sweat-slick neck.  He’s not sliding into suffocating blackness, not burning up in the atmosphere.  He’s not anywhere but here.

John twitches once or twice more over his lap, rolling his ass for the last of the deep waves and holding onto Kaidan’s shoulders.  He even laughs a little, and pats him like a TO after obstacle drills.  _Good job, soldier_. And hey, in the strictest sense, no one had died.

They’re filthy, sticky, and as John rolls away Kaidan feels wet everywhere; The sweat in the small of his back and the fluid spanning his stomach, the saliva drying on the corner of his mouth and the lube drying on his dick.  And he doesn’t mind anything about the after-part, about the wet discomfort, except the one bit of moisture he hadn’t counted on.

“You okay?”

He feels soft fingertips trace the edge of his eye.  John the doctor.  Of course he’s concerned.  Kaidan nods, meeting his eyes.  One day he’ll have crinkles there, too, but for now it’s just tears. 

“Yeah, I’m fine. Good, actually,” Kaidan says, and wipes the truth of it away with the back of his hand.

.

.

.

The funny part about kissing and telling is how Kaidan has no idea what’s supposed to happen after the telling.  It’s not a joke, so he doesn’t expect laughter, but there should be. . .something.  Shepard just holds his gaze, blue and distant as a Presidium waterfall.

“Shepard?”

“What happened to him?”

Kaidan stretches back out on the bed, dragging the sheets over his legs and feeling a little like a spy in a vid.  But, there hadn’t been any real intrigue, no romance, and surely Shepard can see that.  For a moment, he wonders if Shepard would have done the same, trying to recall the guy he’d been before the Collectors.  Before Kaidan, if he’s being brutal.  It’s a question he’d have asked before everything that went down, and one he won’t touch now. 

“You really want to know?” He asks beneath his hand where he’s rubbing the bruised feeling from between his eyes.  Shepard nods, same as kissing, and so Kaidan tells. “He was killed.”

“In action? He was retired, though.”

Kaidan swallows, watching the Normandy’s shield vapor outside the skylight, and the stars moving slowly just beyond. 

Heroes don’t retire. 

He’s been chewing on that piece of regulation hardtack for a long while now, getting no closer to accepting it.  But if anything could break the habit, break the cycle, it was this war and this commander.

“According to the reports, when Cerberus attacked the Citadel he was a first responder,” Kaidan says, sitting up to wrap his arms around his knees. “A volunteer.” 

They’re silent for a while, Shepard picking at the subtle landscape made by the sheets while the tank burbles away behind him.

“Sounds like a good man,” Shepard says and Kaidan sees how sometimes without the armor and the insignias his shoulders settle more easily.  Smaller but more manageable.  Shepard pins him again, a simple stare from blue eyes with crinkles of their own. “If it was going to be another John, I’m glad it was him.”

“Apparently I have a type,” Kaidan says, reaching out to trace the hard, unseen edge of Shepard’s tags under his t-shirt.


End file.
